Since Amy had enjoyed Ice climbing so much and I felt much more confident in my abilities after having climbed again I decided to head up AF Canyon on Friday December 30th to see if there was any ice up there that we could climb the following morning. Unfortunately, I couldn't see any ice whatsoever in any of the normal places. I did get out of the car at one area to hike in and look for some ice, and when I did I noticed that it was quite warm. I couldn't keep myself off of the rock so I did a little bouldering and found that even the rock wasn't too cold for climbing on. I was in an area called The Membrane which is north facing and overhung (so it gets no sun whatsoever) and the temperature was perfect. All though there was no ice I did notice a couple of new routes that must have been bolted in the last year or two since I had been there, and I wanted to try them out.
The next day we decided to head back up the canyon to do some rock climbing instead of ice climbing. It was colder on Saturday than it had been on Friday so I was hoping to go to an area in the sun. Unfortunately, Amy had been out doing things until fairly late in the afternoon, and by the time we got up the canyon there were no areas in the sun anymore. Because of this I decided to go back to The Membrane to try the new routes.
We got to The Membrane and found the rock to be much colder than it had been the day before and Amy didn't even want to climb so I decided to just do one route. According to Mountain Project the route I did is a 5.10b called "Kory's Route". I started up the route which is 4 bolts until the anchors and made it to the 4th bolt before I absolutely couldn't feel my fingers at all because they were so numb. As I clipped the 4th bolt I commented to Amy that I had no idea how good or bad the hold I was clipping from was since I couldn't feel it. Unfortunately this caused me to blow the onsight as I had to take while I warmed up my fingers. I warmed them up, finished the route, lowered off, packed up and headed home.
Even though I only climbed one finger numbing route I still had a good time and am glad that I was able to make it out.
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